France to address gender pay gap in companies

The French government has announced that it would introduce new measures to detect gender pay gaps in workplaces.

It would mandate that next year every company with more than 250 employees install a software that would detect such “unjustified” pay gaps between men and women.

Unless the discrepancies are corrected in three years, they will be fined up to one percent of a company’s wage bill.

For smaller companies having between 50 and 249 people, the deadline for compliance would be 2020.

These are part of about 50 such initiatives announced by the government that is formed based on local best practices that by Marlene Schiappa, state secretary for gender equality, encountered during a 2017 Gender Equality Tour de France.

Even though the laws mandate equal pay for equal work for about 45 years, men in the country are paid 9% more than women, according to government data.